Yes, Farhan Zaidi had to go.
And, of course, Buster Posey is a San Francisco Giants legend.
But what the Giants did on Monday reeks of desperation.
Yes, hiring Posey to replace Zaidi as the team’s top baseball decision maker is a great bit of public relations — everyone loves Buster — but we don’t do PR here.
PR doesn’t win games. A good look isn’t a baseball strategy.
Sorry, I’m here to rain on the parade.
Luckily, Posey and Giants fans have memories of three better parades to fall back on.
Because once these positive vibes dissipate — once the initial scent of this fan-pleasing move wears off, this is the kind of play a floundering company makes as a last-ditch effort to stabilize its stock price.
In that world, they call it a “dead cat bounce.”
They don’t last long.
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Let’s be clear: Posey could absolutely succeed in this new job. The Giants didn’t hire you or me to run their baseball roster — Posey’s qualifications, while not perfectly germane to his new role, are a Hall of Fame playing career and an impeccable reputation in the sport. If anyone can make this bold, perhaps even reckless, transition a success, it’s him.
But yesterday Posey was a Giants board member. Today, he is in charge of not just the Giants’ 26-man roster but also the 40-man roster and nearly 200 players throughout the organization. He’s calling the shots for a massive scouting department ahead of a critical offseason and Rule 5 draft in a matter of weeks.
I know Posey is smart. So was Zaidi. The latter also had done two of the best apprenticeships in the sport before taking over the Giants. We saw how that worked out.
So can a man whose totality in front-office expertise consists of finishing — just finishing — Matt Chapman’s contract extension be considered an improvement over the previous director of baseball operations?
Color me skeptical.
I’ll give Posey this: he has guts. He’s willing to put his unimpeachable reputation on the line for this franchise; this fanbase. He must know he’s heading into a perilous scenario, yet he volunteered anyway. What a dude.
But did Posey volunteer because no one else did?
A buttoned-up organization would have announced Posey and his No. 2 on Monday.
Instead, the Giants advertised the open positions around the new director of baseball operations. It was as if one of the most consequential statements in team chairman Greg Johnson’s tenure in charge was a LinkedIn post.
“Buster has the demeanor, intelligence, and drive to do this job, and we are confident that he and Bob Melvin will work together to bring back winning baseball to San Francisco,” Johnson said.
“We are also fully committed to following the Selig Rule and ensuring diversity in our hiring for any of our open positions.”
Who wants to come work for Buster? Demeanors and drive win games, right?
Posey should be a figurehead, at least to start. He should be granted the opportunity to grow into the top job.
But that’s not the situation he’s entering. No, the Giants have thrown him into the pool, without floaties.
Sink or swim.
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Posey might be taking over a situation that might be the worst situation in baseball — not too dissimilar to what Zaidi inherited back in 2018: A bottom-of-the-barrel farm system, only a handful of viable everyday players, a team that (for a variety of reasons outside of Posey’s control) cannot attract top-tier free agent talent, an ownership group that will not, under any circumstances, commit to a rebuild, and a fanbase that, justly, won’t accept anything but the best.
I can’t blame Giants fans for loving this move. They love Buster. To them, he can do no wrong. There is an undeniable divine quality to him.
All Giants fans can do is hope it all works out — that Posey can handle any challenge thrown his way like a gold-glove catcher.
But hope isn’t much of a strategy either.
I have read and heard many compare this hiring to the 49ers hiring John Lynch.
Love Buster all you want. Believe all you want. But get the facts straight:
Sure, Lynch had no serious front-office experience, and he’s doing great, right?
(We can debate that second point another time.)
This Posey situation couldn’t be more different.
Lynch and Posey are both smart and affable. They’re great guys to put on a dais and talk about the team. But Lynch came to the Bay as a figurehead general manager, Kyle Shanahan had all the power over personnel. In fact, Shanahan was the one who hired Lynch.
Plus, Lynch inherited quality people in his front office and made some rock-solid hires—the first being Adam Peters—in his first weeks on the job.
Lynch built up his staff and grew into the role. Shanahan, seeing that, ceded more and more power to Lynch and that staff as the years progressed.
Posey enters with all the power, and none of that infrastructure.
In fact, he’ll have to build in every direction, as I’m willing to bet there will be plenty of open jobs in the Giants’ baseball operations department soon.
While fans might be appeased by the prodigal son returning to hopefully save the team, what kind of message does it send to the staff Zaidi has managed the last six seasons?
Hey, your boss is out, and we’re replacing him with someone with less practical experience in this field than you.
A lot of resumes are going to be sent out in the coming days.
The fact that will be a problem for Posey shows exactly why this hire is so troublesome. If a DBO is only as good as his staff, then why would Posey need Zaidi’s staff?
After all, it couldn’t keep Zaidi in his role.
Forgive the foray into politics, but it’s all terribly reminiscent of when Donald Trump was vetting vice presidential picks back in 2016. Reportedly, his son, Donald Trump Jr., told potential VPs they would “be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.”
In short, the job of the actual president.
As for Trump? He’d be “Making America great again.”
I sure like and trust Posey more than Trump — perhaps you view them in the same light, that’s neither here nor there — but the former catcher needs someone be in charge of Giants’ “domestic and foreign policy.”
And here the Giants are, actively searching for looking for that person.
But what self-respecting person in baseball would take the job as Posey’s consigliere/the team’s director of baseball operations?
Unless Johnson wants to cut a massive, market-setting check, the Giants aren’t going to land someone capable, worthy, and fully qualified to do all the day-to-day responsibilities of a DPO without that title.
So many have suggested Kim Ng fill this role. She is, indeed, the top free agent front-office mind. But she’s a free agent, working for MLB, because the Marlins wanted to hire someone above her in that organization this time last year. She resigned. She’s a No. 1, so she’s not taking a No. 2 role there, here, or anywhere. Nor should she.
No, it seems the best the Giants will be able to do in this strange, downright unprecedented spot is grab someone on the rise.
Another hire made strictly on potential.
Hopefully, the Giants organization can develop front-office talent better than baseball talent.
